Mid-tier IT cos on prowl again; look to hire up to 30K

NEW DELHI: The hire-no-more hysteria seems to be heading for a soft burial, with mid-tier and niche technology companies returning to the employment orbit as they plan to take in 25,000 to 30,000 experienced hands in the next three to nine months.

The renewed demand has been spurred by a spurt in outsourcing, better order positions and companies expanding their India operations and moving up the value chain. Those on the lookout for trained hands are companies like GlobalLogic India, Aricent, MindTree, CPA Global, Sapient, Symphony Services, Citrix, Adobe, Persistent Solutions, nVidia, Amazon, Agilent and Vertex.

"Customers are stretching their dollars, and outsourcing helps them do that. That's what's driving demand for fresh talent at present," says Prashant Bhatnagar, director-hiring, Sapient. The IT consulting multinational plans to hire about 800 people in the next few months. "Lateral hiring is back and there's plenty of demand for those with three to eight years experience," adds Rishi Das, CEO, CareerNet Consulting, a Bangalore-based headhunter which recruits for over 200 technology companies.

Many companies hiring now had no bench staff or have increased their utilisation and now need more staff as more work is being offshored.

"It's like a food chain. Mid-level companies which have invested in niche skills and started with basic tasks like technology support are now capable of delivering complex work like product design," says another Mumbai-based head hunter, who did not wish to be named due to client sensitivity.

Companies like Applied Materials, Volvo, Boeing, Bank of America, Amazon, the United Health Group and Societe Generale have farmed out work for new enterprise applications development, R&D, engineering services and professional services — like customised software development — among others, driving demand.

"Hiring numbers are back with a vengeance. We do see new demand in areas like software testing, infrastructure management, Internet technologies, enterprise applications development and so on," says Sanjay Shelvankar, talent acquisition head, MindTree. MindTree plans to hire 500-600 lateral employees — with at least four years experience — but Mr Shelvankar added a word of caution, saying it's too early to say whether this trend is sustainable.

Niche providers, too, are scouting for experienced talent. For instance, CPA Global, which does legal processes and global patent filing work for clients like Microsoft and Rio Tinto out of its Noida, US and Europe-based facilities, plans to increase India headcount to 2,000 by end-2010, though lots of it will come over the next few months. The company, at present, has 560 people in India.

Aricent, the telecom-focussed software developer with 6,000 of its 8,000 staff in India, will add another 700 to its India operations by March next year. It's looking for experts with two to six years experience in technologies like 3G wireless, voice over Internet protocol, multi-media handsets and Brew technology, a telecom application development platform. Indrajit Sen, AVP, HR of Aricent, also agrees that most of the hiring is driven by new projects coming in.

"The new hiring is targetted towards work being farmed out by global companies. Now, a lot of critical high-end work is being sent to India and these niche providers are hiring to cater to such demand in applications development, R&D and software engineering space," a person familiar with offshore developments, who requested anonymity, told ET.

While this has brought new opportunity for the mid-level and niche IT companies, triggering a hiring binge among them, the big boys are not entirely immune to the trend. "For this fiscal, we have revised new hires to 20,000 from 18,000 out of which about 4,500 will be lateral hires. This upward revision has been done due to new demand in areas like infrastructure management services and business solutions," says Mohandas Pai, HR head, Infosys Technologies.

However, for experienced employees looking for a switch to specialists service providers, the target area has increased substantially to include a large number of niche companies as well. So, techies looking for a break may migrate to niche-territory.